I booked a flight to MCO on Frontier and a return flight on Spirit. I purchased the Flight Flex option for both. I now have to change both flights.
For Spirit, I would not only be allowed to change the day and time, I could change the route. BUT I was not allowed to change my seat. This was going to result in a $389 difference. The flight was only $24 difference. Those seats were where the $$ was at. So now I’m not flying in the big comfy seats
Chat could not help me without charging me $99 per ticket. The one time free change can only be done online. So I had to first change my seat on my current flight to what I was willing to pay for on my second flight. It showed $0 change even though I was downgrading my seat. When I went to actually change my flight, i did get the full price that I paid, including the original seat charge, towards my new flight. It was a work around. I wonder what would have happened if my original seats weren’t available… Maybe then I would have been able to select new seats. To confirm, changing seats does not count towards the one time flight change but you also do not get a credit for downgraded seats as a rule.
For Frontier, it was confusing to know exactly when I was making the flight change. I had played around with different days last night. I never fully confirmed my changes, always hit the back option on the screen. I checked a few different dates. When I went to officially change the flight today it was showing it was already changed BUT to a date I didn’t want. And it used up my one free change. Chat was very helpful. They waived the change free AND did the changes since I was having problems with the site. I will say I never received a change notification email so maybe there was a glitch and this is why. The new flight should have resulted in small price increase, around $22 I think. But my conformation email showed no additional charge. The only caveat with Frontier is that you can NOT change the flight route- just the date and time.
So while it all worked out it took a lot of time and patience. In the future if I can pick a SW flight I will, hands down. Just because they are no hassle, no hoops IMO. They aren’t even that much more and probably cheaper if we had more than 1 carry on to pay for. It’s just a long weekend so I may not even have to buy a carry one. Rolling the dice on that one. Not pre-purchasing.
ETA: I want to note that Frontier chat made a big deal about them making the exception. I think normally they have the same policy that the 1 free change is suposed to be online only- not with an agent.
All good to know. I would agree that Southwest is less hassle if you have to change. And if my SW flight was anywhere near the same price, I would absolutely go with Southwest for that very reason. In my market I can fly spirit for $20 where a Southwest is almost almost 200+. So currently I’m just making sure I can go on those dates and if I need to rebook a flight I just no-show the original and pay $20 for the new flight. It would cost me more to change it then it would just book a whole new flight.
Totally! $20 is hard to pass up. Spirit and Frontier I th8nk were around $50 each originally. Sometimes I can get SW for that. It’s pretty common to catch a SW fare for $89 and under. I’d have a hard time passing up a $20 flight! Especially since it’s only about an hour flight.
ETA- I also upgraded the seats so the total was around $180 rt pp. Plus $30 total for the flex flight upgrade for each ticket.
This is a great thread with excellent information. I am also flying in and out of BNA and am a Spirit convert. I’ve done the $40 round trip flights without paying for bags, and I’ve paid for a carryon and a big comfy seat and still beat Southwest prices. I started booking the $20 fare as a back up in case southwest is late or cancels but ended up flying spirit and getting my southwest points back. Now I just watch for $20 fares. I have an itch to try a one day trip with spirit… take the earliest flight to MCO and the latest flight back to BNA.
Was planning to book Spirit for our upcoming trip, however, after adding in the cost of bags and seats) we’re traveling with 2 grandchildren), it was $10 cheaper than Southwest. SW had the better flight times and allows a larger carry on so that’s the one I chose.
Anyone know how to figure out what the cost of a bag will be for a flight on Spirit? We are going to LAX and need to bring at least one checked bag and probably one carry on.
It should be on the site when you go through the booking process. Its a pain because you have to put in the passenger info. Just do it for 1 person. IIRC the checked bag is a little cheaper than the carry on, by maybe $5 or $10 dollars. I looked at this a few weeks ago and I think for our next flight it would be around $60 - $75 each prepaid. I’m going to attempt to just pack 2 personal items for the 3-4 days for DH and I. I love compression cubes. But at the gate they are more expensive so if I have to do a carry on I’m budgeting around $95 for 1. That can really eat into the savings.
18x14x8- no more than 40 lbs and needs to be able to go under the seat in front of you. Amazon sells them for $10 last I checked. (Google Spirit personal item bag). I have the compression packing cubes that I love. They don’t save a ton of space over the regular cubes but we’ll make do. DH is going to make me up a cardboard box so I can see with my own eyes if I can get our stuff into 2 of these for a quick 4 day trip.
Personal Item for Spirit is 8x14x18 and they will make you put it in the bin to check and make sure it fits, EVERY TIME. If you have a purse, it needs to go in the personal item bag. When they say 1 personal item they mean ONE.
I found a great rolling bag personal item on Amazon that fits the Spirit bin where they check. I’ve packed for a 4 day Disney trip in it.
Not sure how this will post but I’ll attempt to link the American Tourister underseat Bag I use for Spirit. If the link doesn’t work, just search the name.
That can really eat into the savings.